January 2020 Books

It’s January 2020 and I have finally caught up with all my book blog posts from last year which means I can stop doing half-baked reviews weeks after the fact and hopefully deliver you something a little more thoughtful. January is usually a good reading month for me quantity-wise because I’m still in the mood to read after the Christmas break with none of the social plans and less of the work. Plus you can read here about how I felt being able to buy new books again after my year-long ban, or just watch me gleefully picking up armfuls here. Also, pay (almost) no mind to the stack; there are plenty more books in this month’s round-up; I read lots on my Kindle and also listened to a few, too.

Highs

Lanny by Max Porter

This is a gorgeous, heart-rending little book. I know I've been saying a lot recently that I've been loving long books because I feel really immersed in them, making them easier to love. Well, this is the exception. It's a short read that nonetheless has all the depth of a longer novel. It's also one of the books I was pining after last year as I watched all the glowing reviews roll in, so I made sure it was first on my list for 2020.

It's set in a small English village and follows a strange and charismatic little boy called Lanny; the way Porter writes childhood and children is nothing short of spellbinding. It's the subtlest observances that really bring Lanny to life, and my heart was immediately captured. But we don't hear this story in Lanny's own voice but rather through the voices of his parents, his artistic mentor, and that of a mythical figure who is the village's 'local historian, seventy-fourth-generation cultural humus sifter'. He is a complex shape-shifting character who drinks in the life of the village through listening to their voices, and like us, his favourite voice is Lanny's. If you think this sounds a little weird, you're kind of right; this is an experimental novel where fragments of the villager's voices roll around the page, and the prose shifts and twists under your feet. But nonetheless it is still extremely readable, and there is enough plot to grip on to. Over the course of this novel Porter touches on a lot of things; climate change, the difficulty of parenting and also of telling yourself the truth (sometimes about your parenting), what is lost with the loss of childhood, and also writing, stories and art. I've reserved a lot of the content of this novel so that you can discover it for yourself, as I would highly recommend you do.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

I picked this novel up quite by chance; I was on my book shopping spree at the beginning of the year, saw a pretty copy of it that also happened not to be a hardback (I hate hardbacks) and popped it on my pile. It's one of Dickens' most famous books, and it's one that - although I used to be quite the lover of Dickens - I hadn't read. And then I went to the cinema and saw the trailer for the film and thought I'd better get started.

I absolutely loved it. It's been a while since I read a Victorian novel (except for when I listened to Ivanhoe *shudders*) so I wasn't sure if I was going to love Dickens quite as much as I remember. But I thought it was wonderful; just the right mix of comedy, melodrama and social justice, everything you can expect from a good Dickens novel. I was actually laughing out loud at this book which is quite something for a work that's 170 years old. It's also widely renowned that this is Dickens' favourite of his own novels, partially because it has a fair amount of autobiographical material in it.

Naturally, it's about a lad named David Copperfield, who is born into a comfortable middle-class family only to have his world turned upside down when his mother remarries veritable villain Mr Murdstone. We follow his adventures through life with a cast of eccentric and often lovable characters from all walks of life, and although there were some slow sections in the middle (as it was originally published in serial I'm sure he was eking it out a bit), I found myself gripped throughout. There is no subtlety here, it's Dickens. It's overly sentimental yes, but it's also a lot of fun, and what's wrong with a little sentimentality sometimes? (Yes, I cried, okay?) Everything seems to come together a little too easily and you'd be forgiven for thinking England was the smallest place in the world for the amount of characters that chance on each other quite randomly, but I'm willing to forgive all of that.

It also obviously has a fair amount of historical interest, and I also thought some of the social justice elements were better integrated in this book than others of his I've read (Hard Times not being my favourite of his novels…); in this one he covers child exploitation, issues of class, the treatment of prostitutes and the institute of marriage amongst other things.

As you might be able to tell I really enjoyed it and would definitely recommend giving it a go even if you’re wary of classics yourself. Much of it was all too relevant, and many of the ‘types’ he sets forth are immediately recognisable; eminently charming but secretly evil spoilt schoolboy, anyone? Needless to say, I’m really looking forward to seeing the film as well.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo

Evaristo's Booker prize-winning novel follows twelve people, most of whom are black women - though there is also a nonbinary character, too - and it explores their lives in and around the UK and more widely in the African diaspora. In doing this, Evaristo manages to capture a huge range of black British experience, and how it intersects with gender and sexuality, resulting in a very successful panoramic vision. Each chapter is told (in free indirect style) from the point of view of one of these characters, who are all linked, sometimes tenuously and other times by familial or communal bonds. I thought Evaristo's choice of mostly third person (with plenty of free indirect speech) as opposed to first person really elevated this novel and allowed her to distance herself from her characters and pivot the reader towards either a gentle critique of their flaws, or a more omniscient overview of their journey; why they are as they are, which events in their lives were most important. The style is at once straightforward and readable but also at times lyrical and poetic; there are very few full stops in each of the chapters so line breaks do most of the work of separating different ideas, and as a result the whole novel flows with the life and dynamicity of its characters.

I was a little worried when I started reading this book that it would be a bit disjointed for me, that the chapter-based focus on each of the characters would leave me wanting more of a through line, but I shouldn't have worried. Firstly, there is a sort of plotline in that many of the characters come together for the premiere of a new theatre production by Amma, the first woman we are introduced to - she is a lesbian playwright with a history of anarchism worrying about selling out and becoming subsumed within mainstream culture and the luvvie applause of the National - so there are recognisable places where you can locate yourself in the narrative. Secondly, Evaristo writes so vividly about each of her characters that she easily kept my attention over the course of the book (i.e. at heart she is a good short story writer, too), which was aided by the flow of the writing. The more I read the more I appreciated the scope of this novel, which was compounded by a very moving ending. This book is a remarkable achievement but it's also an enjoyable and fascinating read, and I highly recommend you go out and read it.

Flight from Nevèrÿon by Samuel R. Delany

This is the third book in Delany's Return to Nevèrÿon series, which I am making my way through pretty slowly (I must have read the first one during my MA in 2017). Each volume is comprised of a mixture of short stories and novellas, though there are recurring characters and storylines. They were mostly written over the course of the late 70s and 80s, and they are at the most basic level sword and sorcery stories set in a distant and 'barbaric' past, but they are also so much more. I would describe them as theoretical fiction, too, because they engage so heavily with the theory of the time in which they were written; we are talking deconstruction, post-structuralism, modernism and queer theory. For context I have also read Delany's memoir Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, where he describes his experiences cruising in Times Square over the course of about thirty years, commenting on its eventual gentrification and the culture that he often felt at home in. This is particularly important to this volume of the Nevèrÿon series because whilst Delany deals with queer themes in some of the earlier stories, it is in this one that he particularly looks at cruising and also the AIDS epidemic that came to inform the later memoir at a relatively early stage of the crisis. Indeed, some of the last story, 'The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals', even comes out of the fictional world of Nevèrÿon to talk about Delany's own experiences observing the beginning of the epidemic and its effect on the queer communities he was a part of. In various postscripts added after publication, Delany describes with no small amount of horror the way the epidemic escalated and killed many of his friends. As he writes, 'The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals and the note are documents of a more naïve time'; in this way this book becomes a painful and poignant memorial to the AIDS crisis and (I think) is one of the first pieces of fiction to be written about it. If you haven't gathered from the above, this is therefore a book with a lot to say.

And Delany carries it off masterfully. What I love about him is he wields all the power of deconstruction but with outright political intent; that movement within the theoretical world which could so easily absolve everyone of meaning anything ever, Delany takes it and uses it to make you uncomfortable, but never lets you misunderstand that there are still huge structures of power at work that oppress and violate certain groups. He uses his fantasy world to warp and change rules, the different societies in Nevèrÿon coming up against each other and debating their differences. Thus, the slipping and sliding of language and the meaning of signs are all used with seditious intent, upending everything you know and constantly causing you to question yourself and the text. With the addition of the fantasy and sword and sorcery details, he keeps you hooked and interested, though I must say I think the first book Tales of Nevèrÿon probably works best on sheer enjoyability. These later books are just as important, though, and I will be moving more swiftly on to the final instalment very soon.

Long Bright River by Liz Moore

I always go into crime novels with a certain amount of caution; maybe I'm not reading the right ones, but they don't often seem to hit the mark for me. But Liz Moore's Long Bright River which explores a relationship between sisters marred by addiction, and more widely the opioid crisis in general was a pleasant surprise, though pleasant isn't really the word for it. This was a confidently written and eminently readable page-turner, and I loved that in lots of ways it subverted traditional crime tropes; this time we have a practically sober female detective who is often preoccupied at work with wanting to go and play with her young son. I liked the insertion of history about the Philadelphia neighbourhood in which its set, and while it was also obvious Moore had done a lot of research into the opioid crisis, it was well integrated throughout. Plus we have a good and believable ending, too. It had me gripped but it also had real heart to it.

Lows

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R. R. Martin (audio)

Whilst this book was marginally better than Fire and Blood, it wasn't by much. Set in Westeros, it is another instalment that I can't believe Martin is busy getting published instead of the final A Song of Ice and Fire novel, not least because it isn't that good. It comprises of three novellas that have been written over the last twenty years or so. They feature Dunk and Egg (these names are annoying me already), an unlikely partnership of a hedge knight and a young boy who is actually a Targaryen Prince but chooses to hide his identity and get into trouble instead. Again, I listened to this book, and although this was boring I don't think it would have improved or worsened my experience. Except that I did get bad flashbacks from the endless jousting scenes I listened to with Ivanhoe. The main thing is, these stories are boring, and I spent much of my time whilst listening to them thinking: out of all the things you could imagine for this pair of characters, and this is it? And it's been published? And they're all kind of the same? Please save yourself the trouble my friends and stick to the main event.

Shadowplay by Joseph O'Connor

It's a few days since I finished this book and I'm still confused as to what it was. It's a historical novel set in Victorian London and follows three historical figures: Bram Stoker (famous today as the author of Dracula), Henry Irving (a famous actor at the time known for his Shakespearean work), and Ellen Terry (also a famous actress). Stoker experienced no real success during his lifetime, and spent part of his life running the Lyceum Theatre alongside Irving, and this novel documents their relationship and the life of the theatre during the course of this period.

The prose is atmospheric, descriptive and old-fashioned; exactly what you'd want from a historical novel like this, but beyond that this book continued to confound me. The framing narrative is that the majority of the book is the bare bones of a book Stoker wrote about himself sent to Terry for her own memoir (a bit confusing, I know). And so it's written like bare bones; a lot of it is in note form, and it dodges between scenes and topics with no real through line. I consider myself to be a fairly competent reader but I could barely follow what was happening, particularly in the opening section. It dances around important queer aspects of its characters and plotline, alluding to but never quite getting there. There was a strange supernatural element which didn't really get so far as Dracula but did serve to be completely out of sync with the rest of the book. And it was pretty dull, to boot. Despite all the rave reviews, I would give this one a miss.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

This is a novel which is all style and no substance, which is kind of the point, I think. It is based on Kerouac's own travels with his friends on the roads of America, and I'm sure many of you are familiar with it as it is a classic beat generation novel. It's a book that is all about the journey and the process than the actual road trip itself; don't expect any description of the American landscape here. The characters - who are all deeply unlikable for being pseudo-intellectual racist misogynists - race across the country drinking and getting into scrapes (like knocking up women left and right! Hilarious!). Sometimes it felt like Kerouac was - quite rightly - judging his characters and I wanted to cut him some slack, or maybe there would be a hint of what he might have written if he hadn't typed it all out in just three weeks, but in the end it seemed like an outright romanticisation of this lifestyle so I ultimately couldn't get on board. Even if you liked the characters on any level, the plot is repetitive and it made my head buzz I was so desperate to just get to the end of it. One of those classics I give you permission to miss if you haven't read it already.

Everything in between

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

This is a much beloved novel, and I think perhaps it was its amazing reputation that led me to feel a bit disappointed in the actual reading of it. It is a fantasy novel set in Temerant about renowned wizard Kvothe; at the beginning of the book he is in hiding (though we don't know what from), and with the introduction of a framing device in the form of a storyteller called 'Chronicler', he tells his backstory about how he became a wizard and addressing all the other rumours about him. Well, sort of. This novel being the first in a series, we didn't really get very far in Kvothe's story even after six hundred pages, and I couldn't help but wonder when we were going to get to the point. The writing was wonderfully evocative, hearkening back to a more traditional way of writing fantasy (with a few contemporary twists), so I can see why lots of people enjoyed this book. However, Kvothe's first-person narrative of his own back story paled in comparison to the framing narrative that encases it - partially because I'm not even sure I like Kvothe - and I'm most interested to see what will happen next, as opposed to what has gone before. However, it seems that the first-person narrative continues on into the next book, and I well believe it because we didn't get very far in this one. Also, Kvothe spends most of his time debunking various rumours about him, but the problem is that the rumours sound much more interesting than the reality. Nonetheless, I did enjoy this book because I'm pretty happy to wile away my time reading well-written fantasy, and I will read the next instalment, but sadly I just wasn't bowled over. But shout-out to the prologue, because that really was great.

Pastoralia by George Saunders

Having read and loved Lincoln in the Bardo last year, I was expecting a lot from this collection of Saunders'. The title story is by far the best, which describes the life of a man who works in a theme park as a caveman. It's humiliating and lonely work, not least because his capitalist overlords expect him to act like a caveman even when nobody is around, preventing him from speaking English with his cavewoman co-star. It is ridiculous and hammed up, but it gets the point across; this is no life for a man with a sick son, a man who must be away from him for weeks at a time and live off charred goat meat (or crackers when there's financial troubles at the park) for the entertainment of others.

The collection purports to be about life in modern America; the illogicality and cruelty of existence under capitalism, where you must pay through the nose for some individualistic self-help rubbish, or work a shitty job your whole life just to survive. Only the thing is, the victims of these oppressions begin to become the butt of Saunders' jokes. The hints are there in the title story, but it seems to get worse and worse. Of course it's about the complicity of its characters in their world, but Saunders chooses characters exclusively from the working class, and it becomes cruel and snobby, poking fun at their idiocy and forgetting that they are the vulnerable ones. So I was pretty disappointed. His satire was scathing and some of the premises to the stories were good (though not all), but I couldn't get on board with the lack of empathy or warmth for its subjects.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman (audio)

I'm a little torn with this book because on the one hand, I unreservedly enjoyed it. I'm sure many of you are familiar with Stardust from the film that was made a while ago - which I also really like - and I can assure you that the book captures that same offbeat magic. I love Gaiman's take on the 'adult fairy tale', whereby you have all the traditional folkloric tropes but with a contemporary twist that includes a level of self-awareness (do I dare say it's postmodern?) The book is a bit more understated in some respects than the film, but it still easily held my attention and the story is both surprising and familiar all at once, which any good fairy tale should be. Of course my major problem is the love story; why would Yvaine fall in love with the man that captures her and drags her along by a silver chain for most of the first part of the novel? Because he's the least worst option? That's not generally my idea of a happy ending. But the thing is, I just really enjoyed it. I know that makes me a bad feminist but there we are.

I listened to this book (as you may have guessed from the above), and as an audiobook experience I would definitely recommend it; lord knows not all books work as audio experiences. Neil Gaiman is a wonderful storyteller and it was easy to follow throughout.

Educated by Tara Westover (Book Club)

I would like to preface my review of Westover's memoir by saying it's a tricky business critiquing a memoir or even something that is semi-autobiographical (thinking back to Edward St Aubyn's Mother's Milk for example) because you never want to invalidate someone's experiences, nor comment on events that you know very little about. Nonetheless they are published works with a view towards artistry of some kind so I don't think they should be let off the hook completely.

That aside, I found Educated to be an interesting book; in it, Westover details her experiences growing up in a Mormon survivalist family in which her father reigned supreme, preventing them all from using modern medicine (despite the fact that the family often worked in the dangerous environment of the junkyard) and going to school. As she grows up and experiences physical and verbal abuse at the hands of one of her older brothers, not to mention the recklessness of her father with regard to health and safety that leads to multiple life-threatening injuries, she decides to pursue a formal education and leave the family home. Ultimately she ends up attending both Harvard and Cambridge; a remarkable achievement for Westover.

There has been some controversy online surrounding the veracity of some of Westover's account, though I have to say that this sort of critique doesn't always sit well with me for memoir. It's not something I have read a lot about, but I'm sure much more knowledgeable people than me have described the slipperiness of memoir as a genre, mostly because our memories are inherently flawed, and they also have to be cohesive and storylike in a way human lives often are not. And with regard to abusive or toxic relationships, there is another layer of complexity when it comes to memory and recollection. There are some seeming logical flaws (if Westover had so little education as a child, how did so many of her siblings go on to get Master's level university degrees?) and there was a sort of vengeful tone to some of the sections; however, these are Westover's choices and her interpretation of her experience and it is difficult to get to the bottom of any kind of problem like this.

Westover's style is very personal and readable, with some nice moments of lyricism; I particularly enjoyed her descriptions of the natural environment she grew up in but then I'm a sucker for a landscape. However, I did have some problems with the writing; I wished she had more rigorously engaged with the idea of education beyond simply going from (formally) uneducated to educated. I just wanted a bit more from her on the whole concept; in what ways did it change her other than to show how backwards she felt her family's outlook was? What other forms of education does she think she received from her life before? Are there other ways to be educated? Most of the memoir is taken up with description of events rather than reflection, and I feel like maybe it would have benefited from a few more years coming to fruition on Westover's part.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (audio)

On a Stardust high, I decided to start this audiobook in the hopes that I might have a similarly gripping experience (after slogging my way through Ivanhoe and both the terrible George R. R. Martin books I was quite thrilled with Stardust). Although the narrator Martin Jarvis was fantastic, it's not a book I recommend you listen to, and that might have affected my review, but hopefully I can separate the two. I don't know about you guys, but I'm generally always doing something when I listen to my audiobooks; the only time they get close to my full attention is when I'm driving, so they need to be easy to follow. This book had multiple narratives and characters going on at once, and in classic audiobook fashion there were no pauses when you needed them and loads when you didn't; Jarvis would switch to a new character in a whole new country (there's probably just a paragraph break between them) and I'd only clock five minutes later. So anyway, read this book, don't listen to it! Or maybe I'm just a bad listener, I don't know.

This book follows angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley who have been amicably battling for centuries only to be somewhat disheartened when it turns out its time for the end of the world and the Apocalypse. Together they try to sabotage it because they both quite enjoy the world and its inhabitants. Obviously it was authored by two literary giants in Gaiman and Pratchett, and I do wonder whether that is part of the trouble with this book. It was on the whole pretty enjoyable and at times amusing, though some of the humour and general political points being made were a bit on the nose at times. Sort of like the book thought it was funnier than it actually was. But beyond that I thought there was a lot of exposition and run-up to a slightly disappointing climax, and I know it's a comedy so it's not supposed to be serious but it was a little too simplistic at times. Plus it's a little dated; it was published back in 1990 and there are some parts that definitely wouldn't fly today. I actually ended up watching the TV series this month as well, and I almost think it works better on television than it does as a book (it's not often I say that, I know!) But yes there was a lot of potential with this book that I think went slightly unfulfilled, possibly because it had two authors instead of one who could be more focussed.

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

This is another memoir (two in one month! This is practically unheard of for me) which explores Machado's experience in a same-sex abusive relationship. This is a topic that hasn't found its way into the mainstream, and I'm pleased that Machado has shed light on such an important subject and that it is being widely read and so well received everywhere. The style is experimental, with Machado using the house where most of the abuse took place as a kind of architecture for thought, and then naming each chapter after a genre or style ('Dream House as Romance Novel'/'Dream House as Mrs Dalloway'/'Dream House as Apocalypse') and the reader pieces together the story of this couple from the short vignettes in each of the chapters. There's even a Choose Your Own Adventure moment! Also inserted are some pieces of cultural criticism and queer theory - when she opened the book with Saidiya Hartman my heart sung - and I felt this melting pot of ideas and story and recollection really worked.

There are a few reasons why I didn't absolutely love this book, at least as much as everyone else seems to love it. For one thing, I'm not sure Machado's style is quite my thing; I haven't read any of her other work though I'm sure I will read more, but there were a few moments that I felt were overwritten and too self-conscious; there was none of the confidence and ease to her experimentation that I find in the books I love the best. I also felt like she could have pushed the experimental aspects of the book a bit further, which I know is a strange thing to say when its already an atypical take on a memoir. But for the most part, Machado's voice was the same throughout, and there wasn't as much shift in style as I was expecting for each of the different chapters with their different genres. I think sometimes if you are going to make gestures towards a structure like that you have to push it all the way. And finally I wasn't always convinced on some of her cultural commentary. Nonetheless, this is an important novel and I'm sure the literary community will be hearing more from Machado; I will certainly be picking up her stories because her work intrigues me.

There There by Tommy Orange

This book had so much potential. It starts with a punch, describing to the reader some of the most important events in recent Native American history and states its case of trying to put ‘Urban Indians’ back into the narrative. The language is electric and I seem to have written more direct quotes down from this novel than all the others I’ve written notes on recently. The plot follows a selection of loosely linked characters who are all going to the Oakland powwow; there’s characters looking to reconnect with their heritage or other family members, others who just want to enjoy themselves or lose themselves in the celebration, and crucially another group who want to rob it.

I really thought after the first few pages that I would absolutely love this book and that it would easily be in my favourites of this month, but sadly the plot started to feel rushed and the characters half-baked. The driving force of the outset - to write ‘Urban Indians’ back in - got lost and I feel like it probably could have done with a longer gestation. However, Orange’s language maintained its electricity all the way through and it was still an important and gripping read. I will definitely be reading anything else he writes because there is some serious talent here.